


The Fittest

by rudigersmooch



Category: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Genre: Additional Treat, Gen, Non-player characters - Freeform, Vague implications of child harm, character origin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 14:24:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14058903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudigersmooch/pseuds/rudigersmooch
Summary: Not all those who wander the jungles of Jumanji make it out.





	The Fittest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Clocketpatch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/gifts).



> Hello clocketpatch! I saw your sign-up when you came up for a pinch hit, and I was inspired; I hope you enjoy this treat!

Nigel was never sure what to do with himself when there weren't players around. 

Actually, that wasn't quite right. If he was being truthful, it would be more accurate to say that he was never sure what _Jumanji_ did with him when there weren't players around. There were no memories without them, no consciousness, no time, no change. He must've existed without them, surely, but if he did, it wasn't in the way a person did, not even the way a single, living being did. Nigel wasn't a person and he knew that, and knowing that he knew that always made him wonder what else he should've known about the world beyond the game. It was all a tangle, really, until the players took their first roll, but when they did, it always made two things clearer.

The first: that Nigel existed.

The second: that it was the worst sort of loneliness, that fraction of a second of awareness between when the players joined the game and when the next Van Pelt showed up.

Nigel was never sure which of the two realizations was worse, and so he tried not to dwell on them. Besides, it was always more interesting to focus on the game itself and the shape Van Pelt would take when Jumanji finally called for them. Nigel wasn't fully sure that Van Pelt existed in a way any differently than he did, but at least there was change. Van Pelt was always different from game-to-game, and it helped Nigel keep track of the games he'd lived, the lives he'd seen in passing, to know why Van Pelt showed up.

In the first game, Van Pelt was a woman made of silence and disease, born from two children's fear about their sick mother and defeated by them finding the will to let her go.

In the second game, Van Pelt was a man made of discipline and disdain, created from a child's fear of disappointing his demanding father and defeated by him being brave enough to face him.

In the third game, Van Pelt was a monster made of insects and snakes and darkness. He was five fears from five different people, and he was defeated by teamwork and trust.

The Van Pelts always sprang from fear, and they always existed to be defeated. By that standard, Nigel thought his fate was a rather easy one. 

Of course, Van Pelt almost never agreed.

"I at least have a purpose," Van Pelt said, one game later. Van Pelt was a woman now, all-seeing and able to control the earth and the plants of Jumanji. The girl in this game was too scared to stand up to her overbearing mother and the world around her; Van Pelt would be defeated when the earth shook and the girl planted her feet and stood her ground. "You only seem to exist. Sometimes you help them, and sometimes I just find you sitting here in the bazaar."

Nigel shrugged with his usual amount of cheer. "Here is where I start, most of the time." He paused and thought about that a little more while he stared at his drink. It tasted like something, maybe. "Sometimes the bazaar doesn't exist, though—I wonder why that is?"

"Does it matter? _You_ always exist, even when you don't do anything." Van Pelt seemed annoyed about that, but Nigel didn't know how much of that was Van Pelt themself and how much was the current character. "I wish you'd be consistent."

That was funny, coming from Van Pelt.

But if Nigel existed and Van Pelt existed, he thought they were probably meant to be friends, and friends helped each other in Jumanji. It wouldn't be hard to change a little at Van Pelt's request, although Nigel wasn't sure how he knew that. 

"I'll try." He looked around at the bazaar, at the people milling about. Those people were more like the animals of Jumanji than whatever he and Van Pelt were; they were vicious or helpful at random, and they thrived when the game needed them to. "Next game. I'll try."

"You should. I'd hate to see you get lost."

That phrase stirred a bit of memory, one that Nigel couldn't place from any game.

"Lost? No, I know my way around; I've never been lost before." He looked at Van Pelt, who looked back at him. There was something familiar in the shape of their face, something different—it looked like the way the players did, when they were nearly at the end and had lost hope. 

It was a troubling thought, and it made Nigel ask a question he'd never asked before. 

"Van Pelt. How many games have there been?"

"This is the fifth."

Nigel's memories only included four. There was an entire game that he couldn't remember, and something about Van Pelt's face made him certain that he didn't want to remember.

But he couldn't let it go.

"Next game," he promised again, and then he returned to his drink. This time, he could place the taste: it was bitter. "I'll do better the next game."

***

During the sixth game, somewhere between helping the three players and helping himself to another drink, Nigel remembered the first game. He didn't know if it was just inevitable, a consequence of thinking about it before the fifth game ended, or if it was something else. In all likelihood, it was just Jumanji deciding that he should remember and then allowing it.

The player in the first game had been older. Older, in fact, than all the rest had been; Nigel thought maybe she'd created Jumanji, or maybe that she'd been a child when someone else had created it for her. Either way, she'd known that Jumanji was a dangerously exciting game, filled with things both strange and exotic, more than a mind could imagine on its own. She also hadn't been alone when she'd played the game; she'd had a child with her, a spirited young boy barely old enough to walk. When he'd walked, it had been to explore the world around him, the frightening shapes and sounds and animals and plants. He hadn't been afraid of anything, and he'd never once gotten lost.

The woman's greatest fear had been losing her child.

In the end, she hadn't defeated Van Pelt.

Nigel didn't know what had happened to the boy, but he was almost certain that he hadn't left Jumanji. Or not all of him had, at least, even if the piece that remained was dull and slow and lonely from the passage of time.

Despite the odds and the ending, the boy's spirit of adventure had remained.


End file.
